Old Calabria

ts as to its hotel accommodation. But the fates were against me. On my arrival in the late evening I learnt that the hotels were all closed long ago, the townsfolk having gone to bed "with th

s to be my resting-place. At the entrance she paused, and after informing me that a band of musicians had taken all the beds save one whic

de corps. Groping further, I reached another apartment, vaulted and still lower than the last, an old-fashioned cow-stable, possibly, converted into a bedroom. One

ltatory movements within, it was occupied. Presently the head of a youth emerged, with closed eyes and flushed features. He indulg

inly in bad case. On account of illness,

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ffering youngster alone in this foul hovel." I mis-liked his symptoms--that anguished complexion and delirious intermittent trembling, and began to run over the scanty stock of household remedies contained

med, he gave a more than usually vigorous jerk

e fle

y. I enquired why he had

lute-playing in particular. Tired, moreover, of certain a

e it up as a profession, if anything could be learnt with a band such as his; he was sick, utterly sick, of everything. Above all things, he wished to travel. Visions of America floated before his mind--where was the money to come from? Besides, there was the military service looming close at hand; and then, a widowed mother at home--the in

appy foreigners, who can always do exactly what they l

thing

ng--any

tales of Indian life, of rajahs and diamo

Cala

ach others' tails and build themselves huts among the trees, where they brew iced lemonade, which

ttes as

t allowed to cul

polio, the cur

liest of spirits. Altogether, a memorable night. But at four o'clock the lantern was extinguished and the cavern, bereft of its Salvator-Rosa glamour, resolved its

he first beams, they glistered like compact snow-fields, while their shaded portions might have been mistaken for stretches of mysterious swamp, from which an occasional clump of tree-tops eme

ain resistance comparable only to that of Saguntum or Petelia, during which every available metal, and even money, was converted into bullets to repel the assailers, there followed a three days' slaughter of young and o

slip out of the carriage and arrest my journey at Altamura for a couple of days. But I must have been asl

of Roman legionarie

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, we glide into the sunshine of Hellenic days when the wise Archytas, sage and lawgiver, friend of Plato, ruled this ancient city of Tarentum. A wide sweep of history! And if those Periclean times be not remote enough, yonder lies Oria on its hillto

tiple civilizations--the ever-changing layers of cu

last ten days or so, reviving old memories. The place has grown in the interval; indeed, if one may believe certain persons, the population has increased from thirty to ninety thousand in--I forget how few years. The arsenal brings

. Are such interminable rows of stuccoed barracks artistic to look upon, are they really pleasant to inhabit? Is it reasonable or even sanitary, in a climate of eight months' sunshine, to build these enormous roadways and squares filled with glaring limestone dust that blows into one's eyes

shade the walking population, as in P

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rents. The tenants refuse to be deprived of their chief pleasure in life--that of gazing at the street-passengers, who must be good enough to walk in the sunshine for their delectation. But if you are of an inquisitive turn of mind, you are quite at liberty to return the compliment and to study from the outside the most intimate details of the tenants' lives within. Take your fill of their domestic doings; stare you

City Fathers. This octroi is farmed out and produces (they tell me) 120 pounds a day; there are some hundred toll-collecting posts at the outskirts of the town, and the average salary of their officials is three pounds a month

of sheer curiosity I also tried to procure a plan of the old quarter, that labyrinth of thick-clustering humanity, where the Streets are often so narrow that two persons can barely squeeze past each other. I was informed that no such plan had ever b

lic of

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nothing better than doing un

ary Italian filth, being hardly passable on account of the excessive nastiness and stink." It is now scrupulously clean--so absurdly clean, that it has quite ceased to be picturesque. Not that its buildings are particularly attractive to me; none, that is, save th

preposterous in its very title "Cataldiados," and whoever reads through those six books of Latin hexameters will arise from the perusal half-dazed. Somehow or other, it dislocates one's whole sense of terrestrial values to see a frowsy old monk ** treated in the heroic style and metre, as though he

nian Sea and an oyster-producing lagoon; bridges connect it at one extremi-y with the arsenal or new town, and at the other with the so-called commercial quarter. It is a

ersus terrarum etc., Vol. II, p. 552, and another in J. Blaev's Th

century, and they who are not satisfied with his printed biographies will find o

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stomach as compared with the head and corroborative, in so far, of the views of Metch-nikoff, who holds

ards the Adriatic watershed. At night-time an exquisite perfume of flowers and ripe corn comes wafted into my room over the still waters, and when the sun rises, white settlements begin to sparkle among its olive

lying

nd the achievements of Beaumont, Garros and their colleagues. I have purposely brought his biography with me, to re-p

n odd co

irection, I wished devoutly, at that particular moment, that flying had never been invented; and it was something of a coincidence, I say, that stumbling in this frame of mind down one of the unspeakable little side-streets in the neighbourhood of the University, my glance should have fallen upon an eighteenth-century engraving in a b

ld fellow with incredibly dirty

g at T

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is one of the great Egidio, for instance. I can tell you all about him, for he raised my mother's grand-uncle from the dead; yes, out of the grave, as one may say. Y

had enthralled me. An unsuspected pionee

reverting to the much-vaunte

because they can't. They fly with machines, and think it something quite new and wonderfu

end, my g

entleman will have the goodness to w

o?" Cost what it may, I said to

r the pages lovingly, as though han

r-General of the Franciscan order to which our monk belonged; the official biography, it might be called--dedicated, by permission, to

d awhile. Th

nted as recently as 1853. And here is yet another one, by Antonio Basile--oh, he has been much written about; a most celebrated

know, and it irks my sense of rectitude to pay five francs for the flying monk unle

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for foreigners, at least. Therefore I'll have the great Egidio as well, and Montanar

s! Pray take

been hopelessly swindled, but there! no man can bargain in a hurry, and my eagerness to learn something of the life of this early airman had made me oblivious of the natural values

ble bundle under his arm. More books! An ominous symptom--the clearest demonstration of my defeat; I was

mistakable note of triump

r leisure, and pay me what you like. You cann

is what you think to decipher in my features. But

ased to joke! May it

bly. But not a cloud-bu